|
The Dupo Lady Tigers Varsity Basketball team fell to the Valley Park Lady Hawks 48-46 in Tuesday night girls basketball action. It was another disappointing loss for the Lady Tigers who have played valiantly in a number of contests early this season only to come up short in the end.
At first glance it would have seemed that the two teams were evenly matched with the two schools being of similar size. And the teams on the floor reflected those similarities as neither seemed to have a distinct size advantage over the other in terms of the size of their players or the number of players on each team.
Valley Park took the early lead and seemed determined to keep it for the rest of the contest as the Lady Tigers worked to catch the Lady Hawks for the remainder of the game. The Lady Hawks took a 9-5 lead after the first quarter and maintained that lead at the half 19-16. They extended their lead in the third quarter to 35-27 and then held on to win 48-46. Dupo Varsity Lady Tigers basketball Coach Jill Puckett said, “We had a very good second half. I told them that somehow we’ve got to figure out how to start out better in the first half, the first quarter, the first minute. It takes them awhile to get going.”
The Lady Tigers were not without their opportunities though. The Lady Tigers came to within one point several times in the fourth quarter but just couldn’t seem to get over the top. They outscored the Lady Hawks 19-13 in that fourth quarter. But what did the Lady Tigers in were the missed opportunities at the free throw line and turnovers. Just when the Lady Tigers seemed to get on a roll they would turn the ball over and give up easy baskets to the Lady Hawks. Both teams committed a number of fouls (Valley Park 22, Dupo 21) but Valley Park was 11 of 21 on free throws while Dupo was just 15 of 33 from the stripe. Coach Puckett said, “Free throws and turnovers are killing us. When you have 30 turnovers a game you can’t expect to win and it’s been that way the last couple of games. Against New Athens we had 10 for the game and now we’ve been having that many a quarter.”
|
